[darcs-devel] [issue2541] whatsnew -l much slower in darcs 2.12.5

[Guillaume Hoffmann]

Guillaume Hoffmann <guillaumh at gmail.com> added the comment:

I realized that this is not related to the cache system but to the patch
 "resolve issue2138: report conflicting files in whatsnew -s".

Since that patch, running whatsnew with flag -s (or -l, since -l implies
-s) makes Darcs check whether the repository has conflicts. This makes
Darcs read the history of the repository (same as `darcs
mark-conflicts`), because there is currently no cache that stores which
files contain a conflict.

I agree the current situation (having a slow whatsnew -l because we
check for conflicts) is not cool and should be fixed.

Possible fixes I'm thinking about:

1. report conflicting files only when --machine-readable is passed
2. same but with a new flag --show-conflicts
3. implement aforementioned cache (as a file in _darcs). Note that with
such a cache, running whatsnew -s/-l for the first time in a given state
of a repository would be slow anyway; unless we maintain such cache each
time the set of patches of a repository changes (like when we maintain
the patch-index)

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Darcs bug tracker <bugs at darcs.net>
<http://bugs.darcs.net/issue2541>
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